Morality In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In the story of Frankenstein, Victor decided among all other possible things, to create “human life”. What brought him to want to make such an atrocity? The answer is his conscience. In his deeply scientific mind, he has the means and knowledge like no other. His level of intelligence is some of which humans long to grasp, throughout their entire lives. However, having this vast abyss of intellectual superiority comes with its own set of disadvantages as well. One of which, being that he must not decide whether he should create a creature off of selfish interest, rather consider its benefit to society. Had Victor backed himself up with research, he may have been knowledgeable enough on the topic of human creation, to know that a person’s emotions

cannot be fine-tuned. Once the monstrosity was brought into the world of the living, the initial reaction went a lot nicer than expected.

However, throughout the story, the monster becomes self aware, and begins to murder close relatives of Victor’s. It seems as though the monster has been created to a similar build as Dr. Frankenstein himself. It acts out, and has no sense of morality, which makes you wonder whether the doctor second guessed himself when deciding if bringing the creation into the world, was such a great idea. Anthropomorphic existence is programmed with the ability to make decisions, however not to distinctify whether one is morally right, or wrong. Other sides may argue that humans know the decisions that they are making, and are fully aware of the adverse side effects that can become a common occurrence when selecting a genuinely negative outcome, even after possessing the knowledge of knowing that it is bad. Conscious but conditioned decisions are influenced by the subconscious mind. These decisions are based on past experiences, our culture, peer pressuring, and media

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Much is to be said about the dismal state our minds drifts into in the decision-making process. When the brain goes into a sort of “Auto-Piloting” mode, personal morals and beliefs become blurred, in comparison to the known correct response to data. Most resolutions are mapped out in the psyche of our minds, but are not actually thought out well enough to be backed with information. Some settlements are immediately decided, because a huge fraction of humanoid actions are dictated by external influences, habits and subconsciousness. Within the lifespan of human life, we encounter many external influences that go hand-in-hand in dictating the future actions you may do some day. According to some researchers, your brain makes up its mind on a decision, ten seconds before the decision making process is needed, to be used effectively. In this given time frame of small time, there is no time for the brain to form a cognitive function fast enough, including decision making. Therefore, all decisions that need to be immediately completed/responded to in the stimuli, are already ready to be answered once the topic of area comes up.
Dr John-Dylan Haynes and colleagues conducted an experiment in which the brains of 14 volunteers were analyzed while they performed a decision-based task. The volunteers were asked to press one out of two buttons when they felt they needed to. Each button was operated by a different hand. At the same time, a stream of letters were presented on a screen at 0.5-second intervals, and the volunteers had to remember which letter was showing when they decided to press their button. After the researchers analyzed the data, the earliest signal the team could pick up started around seven seconds before the volunteers reported having made a correct decision. Because there is a delay of a few seconds in the imaging, this means that the brain activity could have begun as much as ten seconds before the conscious decision. The signal came from a region called the frontopolar cortex, at the front of the brain, immediately behind the forehead. With the data presented, and the fact that that amount of volunteers was used for data-tasking, it is a possible theory that the mind really does consider all possible solutions that may appear. During the period of the 1980s, the late neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet, conducted an experiment similar to those of John-Dylan Haynes. Libet used a similar set-up to Haynes, but with just a singular button whilst measuring electrical activity in his subjects' brains. He found that the regions responsible for movement reacted a few hundred milliseconds before a conscious decision was made. Following Libet's study, it has been criticized in the past decades for the method of measuring time, and because the brain’s initial response might have been a broader preparation for movement, instead of activity relating to a specific decision. Haynes and his team further improved Libet’s previous method by asking people to choose between left or right. Because moving the left and right hands generates distinct brain signals, the researchers could show that activity genuinely reflected one of the two decisions. Within the above two experiments, a lot was to be said about the response times of normal human beings. Even though Libet’s study may not have been all that reliable, due to the circumstance in which the brain waves were measured, Haynes’ experiment was further improved making it a reliable source in deciding the conscientious decision-making process. Becoming conscious also means that a questioning of negative behaviors, actions and habits are substituted for more positive ones. Consciousness gives an amazing sensation of control over life which is very motivational and empowering. A sense of consciousness is a way of clearing out your mind of all negative thoughts. In doing so, a person may question their own morals, and attempt to correct whatever possible problem they may have socially, and mentally. Taoism can be tied to consciousness, because disciples of the Taoist faith, emphasize living in harmony with the Tao. Meaning, they seek religious solace with the mind. When religious solace is found from the Tao, the person of that set religion themself, sees a clearer, more conscience view of their mind, thus abolishing the possible “demons” that are plaguing the mind of that individual. Relatively speaking, living more consciously is all about making more deliberate decisions, without having the subconsciousness, habits, society and the environment affect the life that is lived. It is more about knowing what purpose in life is and the realization on how to live a life that makes a person happy, without living in the past or worrying about the future. A way of greatly restricting the negative effects that come along with negative thoughts, one could use the path of least resistance.
The path of least resistance is an option of accomplishing goals in an easy fashion which is typicallly chosen over a path that has the option of investing hard work, effort and time into our leap towards the accomplishment of our aims.

One thing the path of least resistance is not is, a conscious decision. More likely than not, external factors or our subconsciousness influenced us to make this unconscious decision. Choosing the path of least resistance does not involve evaluating what tasks need to be done and trying to figuring out what possible barriers could keep someone from reaching their goal and does not involve the creation of personal strategies to accomplish the

goal.
In conclusion, after reading the story of Frankenstein, an obvious connection of conscious and unconscious decision making, truly influenced Victor as a whole, even though he chose the wrong pathway, without weighing out the possible cons of this brash decision. He made many mistakes along the way of creating his final product. Even after the creation stages of his project, he continued the trend of bad decisions, when he decided to construct a female counterpart to the monster. These many wrong decisions cost him the lives of his beloved family members, and his best friend. It is very conclusive that Victor did not analyze, research, and prove that his experiment would not end in a bust. He was just “banking” on the creature coming out perfectly, so he may best seen as an absolute scientific mogul.